It prevents you from keeping track of how much you’ve read and makes the site more addictive with no significant upside, and even without that it’s worse UX when you try to go back and read something from earlier you have no idea where it is. Commercial sites still use it because they care more about keeping users on the platform than overall UX, but there’s no need for software like Lemmy to do it. Yes, dark UX is bad UX, it’s the worst kind in fact.
If it works against the user’s intention then I’d say that’s friction of another sort. For example if you go to a website and scroll more than you wanted to due to dark UX (as opposed to good content), the user may not immediately realise it’s a bad experience for them, but still they’ve wasted extra time hence the site has got in the way of what they were originally trying to achieve. It’s become normalised so it’s not always recognised.
On a personal note, I want to be able to go on Lemmy and say “OK, I’ll read the top 2 pages of my subscribed communities” and let that be it, that’s a much more reasonable way of approaching a large amount of content.
It prevents you from keeping track of how much you’ve read and makes the site more addictive with no significant upside, and even without that it’s worse UX when you try to go back and read something from earlier you have no idea where it is. Commercial sites still use it because they care more about keeping users on the platform than overall UX, but there’s no need for software like Lemmy to do it. Yes, dark UX is bad UX, it’s the worst kind in fact.
You’re describing Dark-UI
Dark-UI isn’t Bad-UX
Good UX = Easier to use, Easier to navigate, etc. Good UX makes people use your platform more because there is less friction.
If it works against the user’s intention then I’d say that’s friction of another sort. For example if you go to a website and scroll more than you wanted to due to dark UX (as opposed to good content), the user may not immediately realise it’s a bad experience for them, but still they’ve wasted extra time hence the site has got in the way of what they were originally trying to achieve. It’s become normalised so it’s not always recognised.
On a personal note, I want to be able to go on Lemmy and say “OK, I’ll read the top 2 pages of my subscribed communities” and let that be it, that’s a much more reasonable way of approaching a large amount of content.